


Old Habits Die Hard

by ellacj



Series: Addicted To Her Absence [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Angst, F/F, the idea came to me in the shower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:48:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2342381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellacj/pseuds/ellacj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Without Regina, Emma's fallen back into old habits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Habits Die Hard

**Author's Note:**

> Just me trying to exercise my Swan Queen glands while writing the ending of Guardian Angel... for those waiting anxiously for that, I'm right on schedule ((maybe even a bit ahead!)) and should be posting the first chapter before Halloween :D

They’re both so very fucked up.

Emma takes a drag from her cigarette, shaking the ash into the snow as she blows out smoke. “Why are you here?”

“I’m picking up my son,” Regina says simply.

“Nope. _Our son_ is at the movies with Paige until nine; you knew that. So I ask again, _Your Majesty_ , why are you here?”

Regina shifts slightly on her feet. “I wanted to see how you were doing. It’s been a long time, Emma.”

Emma snorts and takes another drag. “No shit. How’s the shiny new husband? Or has the novelty worn off already?”

“Enough,” Regina snaps. “I’ll stay on one condition: we don’t talk about Robin.”

“Who says I even want you to stay?”

“You haven’t thrown me out yet.”

Emma quirks an eyebrow and takes a long drag. “Touché.” She shivers in the frosty winter air.

“You didn’t used to smoke.”

“Yeah? I also used to be happy.” Emma takes one last puff before dropping the burned-down cigarette butt into the snow and crushing it with the toe of her boot.

Regina doesn’t say anything.

“You’re waiting for me to invite you in.”

“If you feel so inclined,” Regina says with false nonchalance that Emma sees through in a heartbeat. It stings just a bit that Regina thinks Emma doesn’t know her well enough to know her bullshit.

Emma gestures grandly as she turns and goes inside, knowing without looking that Regina’s right behind her. “So. What’s with the sudden trip down memory lane?” she asks as she pours two glasses of whiskey. She has a feeling they’ll need it. “Married life not everything you thought it would be?”

“I told you my boundaries,” Regina warns, accepting the glass Emma hands her as they both sit down at the kitchen table.

“I know. But you should know me well enough by now to know that I was never one for boundaries.”

Regina taps her finger absently against the side of the glass, something Emma immediately recognizes as one of her old nervous habits. Good to see some things never change. “Robin’s fine. I’m fine.”

“That makes one of us.” Emma drains her glass in one smooth swallow. Over the past year she’s gotten so used to the burn of the liquid flowing down her throat she barely feels it anymore.

“Does Henry… ever talk about him?”

Emma scoffs. “He still thinks I’m too fragile to hear about it. He thinks I’ll break if I hear that you’ve got a good life with someone else. But maybe that’s what I need to hear. Maybe if I hear that you’re happy I can move on.” She doesn’t bother pouring herself another glass; just picks up the bottle from the table and takes a swig.

Regina sets her glass on the table and twists her ring on her finger, another habit to which Emma had become attuned. “You haven’t moved on yet.”

“Well, did you expect me to? I’m not you, Regina. I can’t just forget about someone just because some pixie dust told me I was destined to be with someone else. Which, by the way, I still think is bullshit.”

Regina sighs and takes a long drink. “I know you do.”

Emma tilts her head. “What do you think? Do you still think he’s your soulmate?”

“You’re drinking again.”

Emma purses her lips. Regina’s always avoided uncomfortable questions; it’s how she functioned, even after they’d been together for so long. “Yeah. What do you care?”

“I know you think I don’t care about you anymore.” Regina averts her gaze to stare at her finger tracing the rim of her glass. “But I do, Emma. I care more than I probably should.”

“Who cares about ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’? How about ‘do’ and ‘don’t’?” Emma resists the urge to take Regina’s hand. Even after a year apart she can barely help but fall into old habits. “’Want’ and ‘don’t want’?”

“I don’t know what I want anymore,” Regina says hoarsely. She swallows the rest of her drink and holds out her glass for another. “All I know is what I have… and what I don’t.”

Emma meets Regina’s gaze, and for the first time that night, studies her face. It’s thinner than she remembers it. Regina’s cheeks have hollowed out, and her eyes are sunken into her face. Even her skin has lost that tanned glow that Emma used to love. Her fingers, too, are bony and pale, much too long and slender for the power they once wielded. Power Robin made her give up. “Do you miss it?” Emma asks softly. “Your magic?”

“Sometimes,” Regina admits. “It was extremely difficult at first. I grew so used to having it there within me… I grew dependent upon it.”

“You were addicted to it.”

“In a way.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t tried to find something to replace it. Lord knows I’ve tried to replace you.” Emma holds up the bottle in her hand in a sort of mock toast before taking a long drink.

Regina chuckles mirthlessly. “Who says I haven’t?” She reaches into her purse, displaying a small orange bottle. Pills. “They’re for back pain.” She pauses, as though unsure if she should go on. She does. “But the pain went away months ago. The kind in my back, anyway.” She doesn’t elaborate, just leaves the words hanging in the air between them, unspoken.

“Does Robin know?”

“Of course not,” Regina snaps. “He’d take them away from me. And then what would I be left with? A husband who tries so hard to measure up to you but can never seem to get it right.”

Emma raises her eyebrows. “Well this is an interesting twist. You don’t love him, do you?”

Regina takes her time popping open her bottle of pills and swallowing two dry. She holds out the bottle to Emma, offering her some, and Emma accepts because what the hell does she have to lose anymore?

She swallows the pills with whiskey straight from the bottle.

“I tried,” Regina says finally. “I tried so hard to love him. I just thought that if I could forget about you then I could do it. I never thought Tinker Bell could be wrong.”

“But she was.”

“And now it’s too late.”

“It’s not,” Emma says before she can stop herself. “You can leave him.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Regina shifts slightly in her chair. “He’s supposed to be my happy ending. And I thought… I thought if I could come here, if I could get closure with you, then maybe I could love him for real.”

“And? Have you gotten your closure yet?”

Regina’s voice is barely louder than a whisper. “Not even close.”

Emma stands up abruptly. “I need a smoke.” She’s halfway to the door before she turns to see Regina still sitting at the table. “You’re welcome to join me.” She slips on her coat and heads outside, pleased to hear the door opening and closing a moment later.

“You left this,” Regina says from behind her. When Emma turns around she’s holding the whiskey bottle out to her in sort of a peace offering. “And no, this doesn’t make me an enabler.”

Emma smirks and lights her cigarette before snatching the bottle from Regina. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.” She removes the cigarette from her mouth and takes a long drink before passing the bottle back. She sits down in the porch swing, patting the space beside her for Regina to sit down, putting the cigarette back between her teeth. “Want one?” she offers, holding the pack out to Regina with one extended.

Regina hesitates for a second before taking it and accepting the light Emma gives her. She coughs a bit on her first drag; it’s been a long time since she smoked. “Look at us,” she says after a moment. “Smoking on your front porch and passing a whiskey bottle back and forth.”

“Don’t forget the prescription drugs.”

Regina chuckles sharply. “What happened to us?”

“A pixie told you your true love was some other dude, so you bailed without a second thought.”

“Right.”

Emma takes a few puffs from her cigarette, spacing them with swigs from the whiskey bottle in the silence that follows.

“I am sorry,” Regina says after a while. “I know you don’t think I am. But I do regret leaving that day. With all of my being.”

“So why did you?”

“I’ve messed up a lot of things in my life. I just thought that this was going to be one thing I didn’t.” She laughs once and takes a drag from her cigarette. “Of course, I messed up worse than ever.” She turns to face Emma. “I finally got something right with you. And I threw it away on some pixie dust and an empty promise.”

Emma can only look into those sorrowful eyes for so long before she turns to stare directly ahead. “I hated you for a long time. I still do, a little bit. But mostly I just love you too damn much. You’re the one person who can drive me crazy, and damn it, Regina, if you’re not worth it.”

For a long moment, the only sounds are the whiskey sloshing in the bottle as it’s passed back and forth and their inhalation and exhalation of cigarette smoke.

“I love you too,” Regina says finally. “I never stopped. And honestly, Emma, if there was a chance for me to leave Robin and have you back, I’d take it in a heartbeat. You have to know that I miss you.”

“Maybe you can’t leave him forever,” Emma says slowly. “But you’re here now. We can have tonight.”

Regina turns her head to meet Emma’s gaze. “Emma, I can’t…”

But Emma’s not listening. She leans close, moving at a snail’s pace, only stopping when her lips are just inches away from Regina’s and they can smell the alcohol and smoke on each other’s breath. “Do you want me to stop?”

Regina’s voice is barely a whisper, strained under the proximity of Emma’s face to hers. “No.”

And then their lips are crashing together, in a way that’s new yet all too familiar. Emma brings her hand to Regina’s waist at the same time as Regina’s fingers tangle themselves in Emma’s hair, both their cigarettes falling, forgotten, and extinguishing in the snow.

“We’ll have tonight,” Emma murmurs between kisses. “To pretend that you’re still mine.”

“And what about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow you go back to your husband and your stepson and play happy family like this never happened. And you take your pills and you try to forget about me just like you’ve always done.”

Regina takes a moment to look into Emma’s eyes. “I’ll never be able to forget about you.”

“No,” Emma agrees. “And I don’t want you to.” She begins kissing her way down the column of Regina’s neck. “I want you to carry me with you for the rest of your life and remember what we had.” She unbuttons the first two buttons on Regina’s blouse and descends upon the newly revealed skin. “And I want you to remember that you chose to throw it away.”

Regina moans softly and arches into Emma’s touch.

“I want you to always remember this. Every time you make love to him, I want you to think of me. I want you to think of me every time you swallow one of your precious little pills. Hell, I want you to think of me every time you open your bathroom cabinet. I want you to look around that giant mansion of yours and see every place where I had you screaming beneath my touch, and I want you to _regret it_.”

“I do,” Regina breathes. “I regret it.”

Emma stands abruptly. “Good. Now get the hell off of my porch.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a married woman. I don’t sleep with married women.”

Regina’s eyes are glazed over – from arousal or intoxication or a combination of the two Emma doesn’t know – as she slowly stands and fixes her clothes. “Are you ever going to be able to forgive me?”

“Probably not.”

“That’s… fair.”

Emma grabs Regina’s purse off of the porch swing and hands it to her, but not before digging out the bottle of pills and popping two into her mouth to dry swallow and tucking the rest into her pocket for later. “You’re way too drunk to drive.”

Regina shoulders her purse. “I have a strong suspicion you don’t care.”

Emma _does_ care, but she refuses to let Regina know that. She walks Regina to the gate. “You know I’m never gonna stop loving you.”

“I know.”

“And I’m never gonna let you stop loving me.”

“I know.”

Emma leans in, pressing a gentle kiss to the plump, red lips she hasn’t tasted in over a year. The sweet apple taste she used to love has been replaced by whiskey and cigarette smoke, but even that is delicious on Regina. “For the road.”

Regina smiles sadly. “I miss you.”

“You never should have left.”

“No. I shouldn’t have.” And with a final kiss to Emma’s cheek, Regina’s gone again.

Emma watches the Benz pull away from the curb with a yearning she hasn’t felt since Regina left the first time. It’s a shitty ending, but then, maybe it’s not the ending at all.

No, Emma has a strong feeling that their story’s not over just yet.

And so it’s with a smile and a bitter laugh that she goes back inside with whiskey in hand, one hand over the bottle of Regina’s pills in her pocket.

Yeah, they’re pretty fucked up. But maybe that’s what makes it work. Maybe that’s what gives her hope for a future. For a second chance. For a happy ending without whiskey or cigarettes or prescription pills.

“Oh, Regina,” she says to her empty living room. “You’re a hot mess.” She takes a swing of whiskey and continues, “But so am I. And god, I hate you for making me like this.” She half-falls onto the couch, reaching into her pocket for the pills. She takes out a single tablet and raises it to the sky in a toast.

“To us."

And she swallows.


End file.
